


unbidden, a roar

by norikae



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Just Chilling in the MCU (Monsta Cinematic Universe), M/M, Time Travel, but I Think It's Fun, destabilised reality, loosely based on teasers for are you there, wow i really just went ham on this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 12:31:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16346783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norikae/pseuds/norikae
Summary: At the end of the world, there is a door.





	unbidden, a roar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [traceleft (ghoulgy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulgy/gifts).



> for sawyer, who lights up my days
> 
> written in 2 hours and not betaed I apologise beforehand. looped TWO (2) z.tao songs for the entire time - they are 揭穿 (expose) and collateral love - thematically nothing to do with this fic but they're beautiful songs even if you don't understand the lyrics!
> 
> some inspiration was had from the following lines from expose:  
> 虽然我们时间不多  
> and although our time is not long  
> 剩下的日子  
> the remaining days  
> 我会珍惜不放弃  
> i will treasure, and not give up  
> 让你做回自己  
> on allowing you to return to yourself.

At the end of the world, there is a door.

That’s what Minhyuk says, anyway. To Hyungwon it is merely a frame in the sand, a door hanging ajar. At most angles you can look through it, and all that lies on the other side is the same sea visible along the entire stretch, swirling ominously, water raging against land.

At most, it might be strange that the wood of the structure is impeccable, a gash of red in the shoreline visible from miles away. Hyungwon concedes as much - despite the salty breeze and harsh winters over the years it has stood ever the same, lines too-sharp against the wide, grey horizon.

Still, it is an idea to contemplate. Hyungwon perches alone on a weathered bench, watching the way it never bends despite the angry bite and tear of the wind. From where he looks the ocean shakes, threatening to burst out of its de facto portrait frame, tides a continuous rumble like the threat - promise? - of rain.

Something about the structure beckons him to touch it, if only to see what would happen. Hyungwon wouldn’t consider himself particularly superstitious, but he’s always been respectful of - of other forces, maybe, of gods he doesn’t understand. Sometimes, looking at it, he thinks the lines grow hazy, wonders if he would, too.

But at any rate, Minhyuk has to be joking. Hyungwon knows he’s seen the actual end of the world. After all, he’s come from it.

 

-

 

The last time Minhyuk was here, he had given Hyungwon a strange rock, shaped like a star mid-death, nothing but spikes protruding from a centre. Hyungwon had turned it carefully over and over in his large, pale hands, and asked what it was for.

“Nothing,” Minhyuk had said, smiling that ineffable smile of his, eyes two full crescents. There was something inapt about this, Hyungwon decided. If anyone were to be moon, it would be him, bound to Minhyuk by gravitational force, ever-shifting to ensure his continued orbit with him at centre. He’d shaken himself back into the present - in a purely figurative sense - and blinked at Minhyuk.

“I’m sorry?” he’d said, apologetically. “I got distracted.”

Minhyuk had laughed at this, a joy that shook his whole body, made him look all _boy_ and fully human. “I just thought it was pretty,” he’d said - surely repeated, because Hyungwon hadn’t been paying attention the first time. “It made me think of you.”

Hyungwon had smiled instinctively at this, returning the gentle stroke of Minhyuk’s thumb over his hand. _Thank you_ , he’d wanted to say, except somehow it had gotten stuck in his throat, as if he had swallowed Minhyuk’s curious, thorned gift and it had lodged there, only barely allowing him space to breathe, benignly suffocating.

“Come back soon,” he’d said, instead, and Minhyuk had let out a melodic peal at that, like the sound of a seaborne mammal he had heard of once, and surged forward, pressing into him.

 

-

 

When he closes his eyes, he is in the sea. He imagines this, Hyungwon knows, because nobody has been there in centuries, afraid of all that has come to lurk in its depths. _There the shadows will eat you alive_ , his mother had taught him, before she had gone away, someplace he could neither understand nor follow.

But when he is here, there is a heady peace, a constant soothing rush in his ears that sounds like Minhyuk’s singing, a slow, soft lullaby in a language he’s sure doesn’t exist anymore. Hyungwon’s limbs are weightless, and everything is blue, shafts of light drifting slowly, so endlessly down from above.

It is overwhelmingly quiet. Minhyuk would like this, he thinks, he who had told Hyungwon stories from before the great shift, wistfully recounting summers drenched in salt and the sun, great metal monstrosities called _ships_ that sailed out at sea.

“Willingly?” Hyungwon remembers asking, dumbfounded. “We - they would _willingly_ go out there? For weeks, months, maybe years on end?”

Minhyuk’s face had contorted, torn as he must have been between amusement and a searing nostalgia. At last he settles, as do his hands on either side of Hyungwon’s face, greedy for touch, but so desperately kind. He appears indescribably sad when he says, “She was kinder then.”

 

-

 

On an off day, free from his shift at the convenience store, Hyungwon strolls into the neighbourhood museum, a strangely derelict facade housing spotless, state-of-the-art insides. He supposes there is very little point in trying to defy the sea breeze, and does not think again about the door to the end of the world.

A pale, grey wraith of a man stares blandly at him as he waves his identification pass, remaining motionless as Hyungwon shuffles from one foot, then to the other, and decides to enter anyway. He prefers the art museums, but something had told him to visit this one, some misplaced pity for the ugly sibling of public education institutions.

He huffs a laugh to himself, passing exhibits with miniature reproductions of how people lived in the eleventh century, fifteenth century, twenty-second. He pauses to look at a model of twenty-fourth century Seoul, the display allowing him to walk its streets, observe its people, stare at what History has taught him is Hangul, re-simplified, imagine being able to read it.

Eventually, he grows bored of appreciating how little convenience stores have changed in the past hundred or so years. Hyungwon moves on to the artefacts section, and stares at how people used to make delicate, wondrous things for no reason other than an enchantment with beauty. The thought somehow calls Minhyuk to mind. He thinks he understands.

Then he sees it, and he pauses, standing very, very still. A thing like a frame from a video of a collapsing star, spikes angrily branching out in perfect symmetry from a hidden core, the item itself a deep, matte replication of night.

 _22nd century_ , the plaque reads, _Ornamental tribute to appease the sea. Thought to have been created in a pair, its counterpart is likely lost to history_.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, just looking, alone in the bright fluorescence of the exhibit. At one point, he does manage to leave, to carry himself home. As he slowly stirs noodles in a pot for dinner, there is a rush in his ears that builds up, a steady, frantic buzz.

 

-

 

He had first seen Minhyuk when he was in high school, walking straight into him on his way back to the flat where he lived alone. He had been limping, eyes wild, and Hyungwon had taken him back, rooting around in his medicine cabinet for a shot to effect near-instant healing. Minhyuk had made a pained squeal, and looked away.

“The thing is,” Hyungwon had said, “I could’ve sworn you appeared out of nowhere.”

“Th - that’s not true,” Minhyuk had replied weakly, “You just weren’t paying attention.”

Hyungwon remembers how unimpressed he had been by that particular lie, mouth pulling into one long, flat, thin line. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll demand payment. Those things are expensive.” They weren’t, really, but he did work two odd jobs after school.

That had seemed to work _too_ well, the dark-haired stranger turning desperate at the very thought. “I don’t even know what currency you use no-” he had cried in reply before slapping hands over his own mouth, eyes desperate, being aquiver.

“Now?” Hyungwon had queried. “Then you aren’t _from_ now?”

The sullen, fearful look had been sufficient answer, even if his visitor hadn’t been foolish enough to attempt an escape with his muscles still knitting themselves back together. And Hyungwon, amazed, had been patient, gentle, kind. Heard of how Minhyuk lived through the heat-death, over and over again, this world one giant, festering bruise in the lines of the universe.

“It used to be once every few years,” he’d said, voice subdued as he scratched something unintelligible into the skin of his knee. Hyungwon watched as it burned briefly white, then flooded red, stark against his pale, translucent skin. “Now it’s down to every few months.”

“What’s wrong with you?” He’d asked bluntly, “Are you a time traveller, or something?”

Minhyuk had laughed, inexplicably delighted at that. “Or something,” he had said after some thought. “ _Traveller_ , to me, implies a choice.”

Curled around Minhyuk, now, Hyungwon threads fingers through his hair, the other hand on his chest, moving in comforting tandem with his every breath. His lashes are long, breaths slow, and he is devastatingly beautiful.

“Minhyuk?”

A hum. “Yeah?”

“How do you come back here?”

Minhyuk blinks, tilting his head upwards to peer owlishly at him like the question is absurd. “You are always calling me,” he says, “And so I come to you.”

Hyungwon cups Minhyuk’s chin for no reason other than trace a yearning hand along his jaw, delighting in the way his eyes flutter shut, and he lets out a soft, pleased sound.

“Then, that means -” He grasps at the material of Minhyuk’s sweater like it is the logical conclusion that must follow, spindly fingers curling into plush fabric, “That I could act as your anchor?”

Minhyuk’s eyes flicker open at the question. When he smiles, this time, Minhyuk is the ocean, a turbulent surface and miles and miles of an unknown. “You don’t want that,” he says, in his eyes a storm.

 

-

 

“What is it like, the end of the world?”

“Lonely.”

 

-

 

The water is in his lungs, an unbearable wetness seizing his throat and squeezing. There is a word for it, he thinks abstractly. A voice that sounds unmistakeably like Minhyuk’s calls it _drowning_. A siren screams, somewhere, enraged, and Hyungwon startles into waking, arms flailing, the world shifting violently into focus.

He faintly registers hitting something, and then there is a _smash_ , a strange tinkling sound like brittle metal being shattered. Dazed, Hyungwon looks to the floor, and feels his heart sink into the ground when he sees Minhyuk’s gift lying on the ground in pieces, smashed beyond recognition.

He forcibly shakes off the dream, makes to retrieve something with which to put the pieces back together when one shard, amongst the others, catches his eye. In juxtaposition to the sleek dark metallic sheen of the rest of the object this one piece is a brilliant red that is oddly familiar - with a start, Hyungwon thinks that it might be the same shade of red as the door to the sea.

So he bundles up, scarf tucked securely around his neck to keep away the chill and the water’s rage, and stands there for an age, looking for an idea, a hint, a connection.

Then he does notice something. In the wood, very close to the hinge, right at the base, there is a crack, difficult to see because of the continuity of the colour, its vividness allconsuming. Thinking he must be insane, Hyungwon nonetheless crouches to look at it, and then at the piece grasped feverishly in his hand. Both are a strange, long isosceles triangle, slim and shallow, and the exact same blinding red.

It would be easy to reach forward and touch the pieces together, to see if his suspicions are right. He thinks it is asking him to, and it would be easy, and so satisfying to see a puzzle solved, if only he would lean closer, hand extended -

Hyungwon jerks back so forcefully he falls back onto the sand, scrambling backwards after for good measure. He doesn’t look back at the beach as he heads home, ignoring the growing ache in his bones.

 

-

 

“Minhyuk,” he pleads, wrapping the piece in both of their hands, “Come with me. We have to go through it - I know this.”

Minhyuk wears an open expression of dejection, his free hand fisting in the spare material of Hyungwon’s sweater at his waist. “You don’t know where it goes,” he says, seeming small, eyes more tired than they had been visits prior. “It could be the end of the world.”

Hyungwon shakes his head, confident. “But it isn’t, is it? You came from there. You would know if it were.”

Minhyuk looks down at their joined hands, thumb brushing habitually over the fleshy part of Hyungwon’s hand. “You’re right,” he says, finally, “It isn’t.”

“So anything would be better than where you came from, right?” Hyungwon pleads, slowly tugging Minhyuk out of his bedroom, leading them both down the boardwalk to the sea. “At worst, it really is just a frame, a dumb decoration we’ve been mad about for no reason. There’s literally nothing stopping us from trying.”

“Something could happen to _you_ ,” Minhyuk protests weakly, even as he lets the other pull him along, putting up very little of a fight. “You don’t know that it’s better than this place.”

Hyungwon is sure when he replies. “It would be better, if I could keep you.”

That - there is nothing Minhyuk can say to that. His hand grips tighter around Hyungwon’s, pressing their interlocked fingers so closely together they almost become one. Soon they are standing before it, peering through the frame at the waters always raging, an angry howl that will not rest.

“Here we go,” Hyungwon breathes, bending to press the pieces together, watching in amazement as it slides into the wood noiselessly, becoming perfect in an instant. Then he straightens, and Minhyuk squeezes his hand again, a silent encouragement, an open question.

“Are you sure?” Minhyuk asks quietly, and when Hyungwon looks at him he seems to fade for a moment, his touch weak and then again firm. It seals his decision. Nodding, he tugs them both forward, towards an amorphous promise, into another place. They are there, and then - and then they are not.

The sun hangs in the sky, and a chill breeze blows. The sea is still, and the door is shut.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ befriend me please i don't bite ](http://twitter.com/frogbabey)


End file.
